Guys an apocalypse is upon us, and it is raining reptiles.
As you’ve probably heard by now, it’s been pretty fucking cold in America. So cold, in fact, that Florida, known for its sunny beaches and tropical climate, saw snow and baltic conditions across the state.
One unusual and rather harrowing side effect of all this weather nonsense is that frozen iguanas are falling from their tree perches. And no, this is not a modern reworking of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Seemingly flying iguanas can also cause humans harm, officials have warned. Iguanas can be ‘cold stunned’ if temperatures drop below 45 degrees Fahrenheit (seven degrees Celsius), becoming temporarily paralysed and entering a kind of cold-coma.
Some friendly and do-gooding types in Florida have taken it upon themselves to rescue these exotic animals from their gardens, some trying to nurse them back to health, and others thinking they’re dead and hoping to dispose of their corpses.
But it appears iguanas are quite aggressive when they wake from a deep, cold-induced coma, as one Florida man can attest. In Key Biscayne, a town south of Miami Beach, this unidentified resident collected a bunch of grey, stone-cold, iguanas that had fallen from a bunch of trees, and loaded them up into his vehicle.
Soon after, the not-so-dead iguanas came to life in the warmed up vehicle and attacked the driver, according to wildlife expert Ron Magill, who recalled the incident on NPR.
And it appears this isn’t the first time Floridians have been fooled by frozen iguanas. In January 2010, South Florida experienced nearly two weeks of temperatures fluctuating in the 30 to 40-degree range.
‘In 2010 when the frozen iguanas began to fall a friend’s neighbor collected a huge black plastic garbage bag of them and when the bag was placed in his car to be taken to dump, the great iguana thawing occurred in his moving vehicle. He was not happy,’ wrote local microbiologist Larry Lynam on Twitter.
I'll say he wasn't happy. It's like Jurassic Park IRL.